Designing the park, building citizenship

State concepts and interventions in the 1930s

Abstract

By the mid 1930s, there was a profound transformation in Government´s strategies for urban intervention, particularly in the subject of ​​public spaces. In the Argentine context, this shift was mobilized by the processes of modernization experienced by the main cities, boosting their social, economic and cultural structure. The recognition of the need for unprecedented modalities of action by the State leads to the inclusion of technical solutions, often structured in plans. This way the Stated responded to the demands for more leisure areas in the consolidating suburbs, trying to overcome the growing metropolitan anomie and to favor the construction of citizenship. The context of economic crisis in which public coffers were plunged forced both a readjustment of investment and the inclusion of palliative strategies for the largely unemployed population.
The present article takes as a case study the Plan for the Creation of Parks and Squares sanctioned by the Legislature of the Province of Santa Fe in 1935, and executed during the subsequent five years. This State initiative of unprecedented is analyzed and recognized by the forceful transformation that it implied in the social and cultural landscape of the cities that were intervened, allowing in turn considering the link between the history of the State and the history of architecture and urbanism.